Here is my opinion: I would tend to place Queen right in the middle of the spectrum. Although Queen was a great heavy metal band, you also find an amusing tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and a campy, gay sensibility that is totally uncharacteristic of deadly serious white bands such as Led Zeppelin and The Clash. Queen further produced an entire disco album, “Hot Space,” while Freddie Mercury's influences appeared to have been largely black (for example, Aretha Franklin, The Jackson 5 and Lionel Richie). As the article points out, these musical influences fall directly onto the pop side of things. I also pointed out in a previous post that, for a "white" rock band, Queen had an unusually sophisticated sense of rhythm as well.

OK, so I am waiting to hear your views here. I hope to hear some original, insightful and outrageous things! Use the article to help guide you.

Rock or Pop? Both and then some. They wrote some inventive hard rock songs and crafted top notch pop songs. I particularly like the fact that they had songs outside the spectrum of Rock or Pop like Cabaret/Vaudeville and Rockabilly.

Yeah, I agree that they moved from rock to pop over the years. On the other hand, my favorite songs include "Radio Ga Ga," "I Want to Break Free," "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," "Another One Bites the Dust," "Under Pressure," and "One Vision." These are all pop songs.

Queen were predominetly rock before hot space. They always had popish songs in the 70's though. You wouldnt call 'killer queen' rock, but you wouldnt call it pop either. Same with their pop years, they always had rock songs aswell as pop songs, hammer to fall, under pressure.

I like the idea of consulting their live act to put a label on the band. I listened to the "Live at the Bowl" album a couple days ago and was surprised to hear how they were able to turn material from Hot Space into loud rock songs.

I would vote that Queen was a rock band. It seems that that is what they wanted to be.